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Sacramento Bee
Friday, May 04, 2007
Republicans and Democrats may not agree on much when it comes to campaign finance. Yet there should be unanimity on one issue: the need to speed up disclosure of who is contributing big bucks to politicians seeking office.
Senators are considering legislation that would accomplish that goal in their clubby chamber. Yet a single unnamed senator _ call that senator The Phantom _ has put a hold on legislation that would require electronic filing of Senate campaign reports. Who is this masked senator?
In all likelihood, The Phantom is a supporter of the current Stone Age reporting requirements in the U.S. Senate. Unlike their counterparts running for the House or the White House, candidates for the Senate don't have to file their reports electronically. Instead, they are processed through a labyrinthine system designed to prevent quick disclosure of which interests are trying to elect some powerful federal officeholders.
First, candidates file paper copies of their reports with the Senate Office of Public Records, which scans them and sends them digitally to the Federal Elections Committee.
The FEC prints the reports and sends them to a vendor in Fredericksburg, Va., where the information is keyed in by hand and then transferred back to the FEC database.
This process costs taxpayers $250,000 yearly. More important, it often prevents voters from learning who has contributed to Senate candidates until the election is over.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, and Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Mississippi, are sponsoring S. 223, which would require the information to be filed electronically. The bill has the support of 36 other senators, including Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California.
Twice last month, Feinstein went to the Senate floor to obtain unanimous consent on the legislation, which sailed through committee without an objection. And twice, an unnamed GOP senator put what is known as "secret hold" on the bill under the Senate's arcane rules.
Who is this Phantom? Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, surely knows. He issued the first objection "on behalf of a Republican senator." Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky, issued the second one last week.
The Senate's Republican leadership should be ashamed. They are using shrouded methods to protect a shrouded system of campaign financing, and senators from both parties are providing protection.
Many of them presumably know the identity of The Phantom. But in the chummy world of the U.S. Senate, they refuse to unmask that senator or to renounce such devious ways.
(Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
